Play

The French seem to do just about everything with an enviably effortless sense of class and refinement. Case in point: the entire catalogue of Versailles synth-pop heroes Phoenix.

There's the 20-year career they've carved out and the six excellent albums that have come throughout it, but there's also ties to other French world-beaters like Daft Punk and Air that show their fingerprints have been just about everywhere.

Now, as the band return to Australia for their first tour in four years, we're having a very classy two-hour celebration of their incredible career. Polish up those dance shoes, you don't want to embarrass yourself in front of these dapper fellows.

Join Gemma Pike for the Phoenix J Files from 8pm, Thursday 22 February

Chapter 1

Too Young For Fame

When you first look Phoenix's way, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they popped onto the Hype Machine out of nowhere in the mid-2000s.

Once you do a double take, though, you'll see that the laidback French persona is actually covering up a hardworking, persistent career of more than 20 years.

In fact, Phoenix even predate their often-cited predecessors The Strokes; Thomas Mars with lead vocals, Deck d'Arcy on bass, and Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz both on guitar came together as teens to form a band in the early 1990s.

In 2018, we're fast approaching the ten-year anniversary of their breakthrough hit record Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

The 2009 record won Phoenix a Grammy, featured their first platinum single – and legit summer anthem – ‘1901', made them the most blogged about band in 2009, spawned a viral video of primary school kids singing ‘Lisztomania' and finally earned the band festival headliner status.

“To be honest, we thought we were the next Beatles, that's how cocky we were as teenagers. We thought that our record would come out and everything would change the next day.

"Things didn't change, they gradually changed, so then we learnt that it didn't really matter how much things changed around you.

“We just take a lot of pleasure in doing things together. Of course, it's better if people connect with your songs, but we don't really take that into consideration very much anymore, we just try to make something for the four of us and think that if it's good for us it will be good for somebody else.”

Chapter 2

A Band Of Brothers

Phoenix-by-Shervin-Lainez-1600x917

For as long as bands have existed, so has the inner turmoil of clashing personalities, arguments and on-tour tension.

It's become a classic trope for film and TV, and an addictive drama for fans to follow. The reconciliation of a band then makes for a glorious reunion after which fans can say they will die happy.

If you're looking for that drama within Phoenix, though, you're out of luck. It's been almost two decades since their debut album, United, and they've playing together for close to three.

Friends growing up, Mars, d'Arcy and Mazzalai met while at school in Versailles. Mazzalai told Index Magazine they were the only people at school who had heard of My Bloody Valentine, so “became friends immediately”.

And even though they went on to form a band, friendship was what came first.

“I showed Thomas and Deck that I could play the Pixies' song ‘Where Is My Mind?' on guitar,” Mazzalai said. “But when I was 16, the chord sequence was too hard for me to play standing up, so I had to do it sitting down. Honestly, I think I joined the band just to hang out with them.”

Brancowitz, Mazzalai's older brother, joined the band a few years later after his previous band, Darlin', parted ways. (The other two members of Darlin' went on to form Daft Punk, taking their name from a Melody Maker review of Darlin', which had described their music as “a daft punky thrash”.)

Starting so young meant that they worked out any band angst early on. Mars recognises how lucky they are to have endured without the drama.

“It's very unique,” he told Rappler. “Most of the bands I know there seems to be a kind of tension. Working together creates tension. But when we were 14, we spent pretty much a year or two only fighting. All the time. So, I think we got it out of our system.”

Instead, they forged a shared goal and discipline out of their similar upbringing and experiences that turned them into a family. Actor and musician Jason Schwartzman, who is also Mars's cousin by marriage and a Phoenix fan, says it's one of things he's admired about Phoenix as a band.

“I remember at his wedding, they were in the midst of all of this playing and recording, and all four of them were huddled in a corner talking and laughing,” Schwartzman told Pitchfork.

“I just remember thinking that most other bands would take a break from each other. It's unique. That image to me is the overall spirit of the band, and when you're around that, you're like, ‘Yeah, it would be fun to be with your friends that you've had since you were young.' That's what I've always admired about them.”

It's also meant that Phoenix has developed an exceptional song writing process.

Speaking to Ben and Liam on triple j last year, Mars said that the only thing that affected their songwriting wasn't location or the atmosphere created by night or day, but the four of them being together.

"You know ants? They have very minimal tasks but in the end they build these very complex structures,” he told The Guardian. “That's the same for us. Really, I don't remember taking creative decisions, they just happen."

The need for each other also seems to have created a parity between the members of Phoenix. In the same interview with Ben and Liam, Mars corrected Ben and Liam when they described him as Phoenix's frontman of the band.

“There's no frontman in Phoenix. It's a democracy,” he said. “We are either all in the front – actually we prefer to be in the back. When we do photoshoots, it's a fight to be in the back.”

(He isn't joking either, a quick search rarely turns up a press photo without all four of them together.)

The same goes for onstage performing, the four of them line up across the strange so neither is foregrounded or a wallflower. Each member is just as important as another.

“When we are making music it's like we need to be in some sort of a trance; we need our egos to be tired, we need our bodies to be tired, we need our systems to be so exhausted that there's no exception,” Mars told Totally Dublin.

“Everything has to come from an exhausted body and then you realise, when you hear it in song, that what you've come up with is so different from who you are. That's what we like most, things that surprise us.”

Chapter 3

Teens In Revolt

phoenix-1600x917

To look at, Phoenix – with their floppy hair and matching bomber jackets – don't exactly come off as rebels.

While they're not about to sing ‘God Save The Queen' on the Thames or trash a hotel room, growing up in Versailles, a city drenched in historical significance, did spark a level of rebellion within them.

There is something satisfying about two things that are not supposed to glue but you manage to put them together.

Their style of rebellion is more silly than harmful, tending towards subtle mockery of the reverence for the past.

It was this attitude which drew them to bands like My Bloody Valentine growing up, who were so disturbing and noisy compared to what they were surrounded by day to day. And it brought them together.

“It was something that helped us in the band as a bond,” Mars said. “Us against the others – it gave us the feeling that we were part of something special, not like everybody else, which when you're a teenager you're always looking for.

“Things like historical figures are very appealing to us and we like to mix things that shouldn't match,” Mars said.

“There is something satisfying about two things that are not supposed to glue but you manage to put them together; like Franz Liszt [the composer who is the subject of ‘Lisztomania'] with a modern synthesiser and guitar riff. We were happy to put those things together.”

Chapter 4

Abandoning Their Mother Tongue

Like their fellow countrymen and contemporaries Daft Punk, Phoenix have steered away from their mother tongue for their vocals.

“It's very hard to make our music sound good in French," he told Index Magazine. "Every language has its own rhythm, its own sound chemistry. And French just doesn't work for our songs.”

Everyone who's been writing French music since [Serge Gainsbourg] is struggling

Thomas Mars - The Guardian, 2013

Mars, though, later claimed to The AV Club, “There was never a choice”, English was the first instinct for the band as teens.

“You reproduce the thing you like," he said. "And most of the bands we liked were coming from England or the U.S.”

Singing in English also proved to be better suited to their musical sensibilities.

For the band, English was a useful tool to mask true feelings and from anything sounding too autobiographical.

“We don't use it to be accurate or honest or authentic,” Mars told the Evening Standard. “We love the fact that it has the charm of the awkward, distorted reality.”

Cryptic, abstract nonsense was more their bag than unfettered honesty, and in French “every word betray[ed] what [was] going on.” English, on the other hand, had flexibility:

“In English, you can put all these pieces together and create this weird, poetic thing," Mars told The Guardian. "It's very like French surrealism in a way."

Explaining this further to Rolling Stone, Mars uses Hank Williams, the American country singer-songwriter, as an example:

“Hank Williams singing 'My heart is full of tears' — that's not possible in French. You would have to say 'My heart is full of blood, and the blood is wet, and therefore the blood is like tears' — and that's not a song. That's why there's no French Hank Williams."

It didn't help that the one Frenchman they thought had managed to master French lyrics was a more “overwhelming” legacy than an inspirational one, either.

“Everyone who's been writing French music since [Gainsbourg] is struggling,” he told The Guardian.

“It's the truth, it's horrible to see. Histoire de Melody Nelson is written so perfectly, he used the language so well, no one else can come after it. So awkward, so modern. The same level can't be reached again… you're not going to better him.”

Embracing their non-native tongue came to be something that they proud of, too. A point of difference.

“We also came to cherish the fact that there was no one in France singing in English—we were so happy to be the first," Mars said. "Even if we are traitors to our country, which I'll never understand, because we talk about things that are very French.”

In records since, Phoenix have also reached into other languages and cultures for inspiration, too. For latest album Ti Amo, while it turned into a fantasy version of Italy born out of their imaginations, the Italian words and lyrics simply emerged during the song writing process as placeholder because Mars had become “bored” with his own voice.

It's not the first time they've added international flavour for inspiration either. In an interview with Lindsay 'The Doctor' McDougall on triple j in 2013, Mars talked about the Chinese and Ethiopian influences in the opening hook and parts of the chorus of Bankrupt! track ‘Entertainment'.

“Ultimately, the more languages we use when we're making a record, the goal is to create our own language," Mars told Ben and Liam on triple j last year. "It might sound like a contradiction but that's what we're trying to do in the end.”

The distortion of multiple languages and cultural charms gives Phoenix's music an international school accent. One you're not quite able to place where it's from without the prior knowledge of who they are and what they're trying to achieve.

"We try to create our own language. But to create our own language we have to use a vocabulary that everybody uses," Mars told Noisey.

Chapter 5

Getting Goosebumps

Being on hand to help Mars's wife Sofia Coppola convey specific feelings in the soundtracks for her films, it's no surprise that emotion and mood drive a lot of Phoenix's music.

The band have featured in, or contributed to, all of Coppola's films since Lost In Translation, where she used the track ‘Too Young'. The couple actually met during The Virgin Suicides in 1999, though. When Air was producing the soundtrack and Mars featured on the track ‘Playground Love'.

“And when we found music, suddenly there was a meaning and there was this unbelievable shock of emotions, and also this is all this science you had to learn and we did it being part of a gang of friends that was very solid. And united against the rest of the world.”

Brancowitz admits they aren't sure what they're doing, but that emotion is everything.

"We have no clue what we're doing," he confessed to Pitchfork, "But the more goosebumps we have, the closer we are. It's all about the emotion. It would be pretentious to say the opposite."

“The only compass we have in all the decisions is [in] our hearts, emotions,” Brancowitz said in the Bandwagon interview. "If we feel it there, we know it's good. We know songwriting is a science, so there's a lot of brain involved, but in the end, it's heart that makes these decisions.”

While recording Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, it was one of their friends who was the compass of emotion for the record. Phillipe Zdar, one half of Cassius, was visiting the band in the studio every week cultivating an atmosphere and offering opinions in a very literal sense.

“If he loved a song, he would come to the studio that night with champagne,” Mars told The AV Club. “But if he disliked a song, he would be so sad that we would try to change it, so he would be happy.”